Being grateful for everything in my life…. no matter what…

I have always been firmly entrenched in the “Santa is real” camp. I love the mystery and the excitement that comes with believing in Santa and love sharing that with others. I feel that the best way to continue that belief, as we get older, is to strive to become more Santa-like in our approach to the holiday season in general and to our fellow man in particular. That being said, the question of how to create that “Santa is real” feeling in our kids can be a daunting task. Here’s how we chose to represent Santa in our family.

When my boys were young, I found it increasingly difficult to figure out how I was going to adequately respond to their analytical questions as they got older. M is a fact-and-numbers kind of guy while I am more of a touchy-feely person, so I needed to come up with a plan that worked for both of us. We also lived far from family who wanted to give things to our boys, so I needed to make sure those gifts were properly thanked and appreciated. On our first Christmas as parents, I realized just how difficult this could become, given that we used money from relatives to purchase items that our boys wanted to find “from Santa” under the tree. Why did someone else get credit for the gifts that my child/ren would receive?!? Enter our “Santa Plan”.

At our house, Santa only leaves one present. That Santa present is usually the big/bulky gift that’s hard to wrap… and sometimes darn near impossible… remember this “must-have” gift? This was the “Santa gift” for D when he was 5 years old and we got a similar one for E when he was old enough. We lived in military housing (and a third floor apartment) at that time, so these cars ended up being indoor toys. As the boys got older, the Santa gift adjusted and became something that both boys could use and enjoy, but it was always something big. We explained it to them by saying that we’d “told” Santa that we’d rather have him focus on giving gifts to those kids who needed him more so we asked him to just bring one present and leave it unwrapped.

One of my favorite Santa gifts was one of the last gifts the boys got from Santa (before we dropped all the pretense and simply gave our kids their gifts from us)… a 7-in-one game table. I bought it at a Black Friday sale and M/I put it together in our bathroom a few nights before we left for PA that year. To heighten the surprise, we sent a letter to my mom’s house “from Santa” explaining that Santa knew we were spending the holiday with family, instead of at our house, and that he wanted them to know that he had left their Santa Gift in our living room for them to have when we got back home. M/I loaded the van and were ready to leave for PA when M said he needed to do one last task before we left and asked for my help… so we left the boys in van and quickly moved the game table from our bathroom and into the Living Room before heading out for a PA holiday. The boys read their Santa letter on Christmas morning and were really excited to come home to see if he’d actually come to our house while we were gone. The look on their faces when we let them race in before us was worth all the hiding we’d done… “Santa really DID come”… they were so excited!

One thing that I wish we’d incorporated into our Santa Plan was the concept of a “Santa Key”. We have lived in a few places without chimneys (apartments or houses without a fireplace), so this idea would have worked well. The plan is to use a special old key that you leave on the outside door to your home for Santa to use on Christmas Eve – those skeleton keys are perfect and you can spray paint them gold to make them look even more festive. Santa enters your house, using his special Santa Key, leaves his gift(s), and then places the key on the tree for the kids to find on Christmas morning. Since we didn’t do the traditional cookies-and-milk-left-out-for-Santa thing, this is a fun way for the kids to search for proof that Santa had indeed stopped by their house.

However you teach your children about Santa, may this coming holiday season be one of childlike wonder and wide-eyed joy at all that can be good about Santa’s presence in our lives. Wishing you a Happy Ho-Ho-Holiday, however you celebrate!

Like this:

Since our move last week, I’ve been thinking about “The way we’ve always done things” and how this will change in the coming year. As we celebrate Easter in our apartment this year, our tradition of sharing this holiday meal with dear friends is going to become a treasured memory. We had a “traditional menu” of spiral ham, scalloped potatoes, Mimi’s peas (a twist on green bean casserole), some sort of fresh vegetable, homemade rolls, and a special dessert made by my best friend, who happens to be an incredible chef. Easter dinner will definitely not be the same this year and, while I will miss the comfort of those dear and special people, I have to take heart in knowing that this is part of our new/next path.

Change isn’t easy… it’s a shedding of the familiar and learning to embrace the different. It’s mourning those things you will miss while learning to enjoy those things you hadn’t yet contemplated. While I recognize the benefits that can come about by giving way to new traditions, it’s still a bumpy road to travel. GIving a simple wink-and-a-nod to all that has come before isn’t enough… but going into a full-on-mourning is too much. Where do we find that happy medium when it comes to change?

Our family has relied a great deal on tradition. Creating new ones and resurrecting others has been a coping mechanism, especially when my boys were younger. Some, I pray, will always remain important… primarily our Thanksgiving and Christmas menus… while others will either meld to fit our currently family dynamic or fall by the wayside entirely. I loved hearing E ask if I was making sloppy joes and homemade rolls for Trick-or-Treating night, “because that’s what you always make for Trick-or-Treating”. Is “The way we’ve always done things” enough of a reason to keep a certain tradition alive or is there a deeper, cultural reason for maintaining the status quo?

During this time of transition, I’m doing a great deal of questioning the importance of individual family traditions. I’m learning about my own expectations and those of my family… and finding where they intersect and where they veer off in totally different directions. It’s both difficult and refreshing. Is it important to make that same Easter holiday meal for just the two of us or is there something specific that’s important enough to salvage and recreate? Maybe we don’t need a spiral cut ham dinner to make our holiday complete… maybe I really *do* want some sort of special thing that reminds me of the Easters from my childhood. I’ve chosen to get a simple pink hard-boiled egg from the grocery store and make something out of that as my Easter touchstone for this year. Nothing else will be the same (ok… we *do* have jelly beans in the house and M just brought me a few special Creme Eggs) but that’s going to be where our tradition will end today.

We’re making way for new traditions to become our anchor… stripping down all the old ways of celebrating of holidays and coming up with new things that are more us, more true, and more real. Simply doing things because “that’s the way we’ve always done it” isn’t as good an answer as it has been in the past. It’s not going to be easy, but I believe that the end result will be a more true reflection on us and on our faith. Traditions, I believe, aren’t meant to be chains that weigh us back to the past… they’re meant to be links that keep us connected to one another, generation to generation, in whatever way seems best to each family.

My hope is that our traditions become ones that my sons will carry into their adult lives… not as stagnant blueprints, but as ways to create traditions of their own, linking the future with the past.

Isn’t that what we all want from traditions?

Wishing you each a most blessed Easter… and in the traditional Episcopalian way, let me greet you with “The Lord is Risen! He is Risen indeed! Alleluia, Alleluia, Alleluia!”